Silvio Berlusconi: ‘masseur of the masses’

The four-time prime minister Silvio Berlusconi died on June 12 at Milan's San Raffaele hospital, aged 86. Keystone / Gregorio Borgia

Reactions to the death of former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, aged 86, have been flooding in. The Swiss press have not pulled any punches, accusing the flamboyant politician and media tycoon of using his power primarily to protect his own business interests.

The four-time prime minister Silvio Berlusconi died on Monday at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital, where he was admitted on Friday. He had reportedly suffered from leukaemia “for some time” and had recently developed a lung infection.

The news of his death immediately made headlines around the world, including Switzerland.

‘The Great Seducer’

“He changed the world, even if not for the better,” ledExternal link the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. “Goodbye Knight!”, declared Blick, while the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)went withExternal link: “The great seducer of Italy has died at the age of 86”.

Berlusconi will go down in history as “an eccentric political avant-garde figure, a pioneer of populists and demagogues, and characters who turn heads and charlatans who talk like him and who lie like he did”, wrote the Tages-Anzeiger’s Rome correspondent Oliver Meiler.

Former US President Donald Trump used to make reference to Berlusconi, said Meiler. But the Italian “never liked the comparison; he always thought he was better, more complex and more intelligent than that sucker who arrived at the White House”, he said.

Even the NZZ does not hold back its criticism of the former Italian prime minister: “Everything about Berlusconi was false: his face lift and his hair refreshed, his promises and his statements, he also had false friends and associates – especially those from the mafia.”

“Berlusconi,” NZZ writes, “presented himself to the electorate as an expert entrepreneur and a friend of freedom. He promised to make the Italian state work. Then he did the opposite, further sabotaging the already battered rule of law.”

‘The man who was everything and nothing’

“Entrepreneur, builder, singer, publisher, banker, sportsman, super-mega-president of anything – from Standa department stores to AC Milan football club – husband, lover, devout, prime minister, defendant, railway worker, joke-teller, even ‘the Lord’s anointed’, according to his own definition,” wrote the Ticino-based La RegioneExternal link tracing the flamboyant media tycoon’s long career.

“The man who was everything and nothing,” it went on.

After building a real estate, football and television empire in the 1970s and 1980s, Berlusconi threw himself into politics, becoming prime minister four times – in 1994-1995, 2001-2005, 2005-2006 and 2008-2011 – despite multiple legal scandals.

When he last stepped down in 2011, Italy was close to a Greek-style debt crisis and his own reputation sullied by allegations that he had hosted “bunga bunga” sex parties with underage women, something he denied. He was acquitted on appeal on all charges related to the parties, but he was convicted for tax fraud in 2013, leading to a five-year ban on holding public office.

Despite his health woes and the relentless court battles, Berlusconi refused to relinquish control of Forza Italia and returned to frontline politics, winning a seat in the European Parliament in 2019 and in the Italian Senate last year.

Berlusconi presented himself as a statesman when he launched his political career back in 1994, saying he was motivated by the desire to defend Italy from the “Communist danger”, but ultimately he turned out to be someone “who cares exclusively about himself”, said NZZ.

He took on the role of “a new leader in a postmodern guise, sure of everything and empowered to do anything”, said NZZ. “As leader and marauding horseman, he rallied his followers behind him, who hoped to gain advantage from this man. He polarised the country: right against left. With this method and thanks to his media power, he dominated the political scene, both in government and in the opposition.”

‘A masseur of the masses’

Berlusconi’s party was eclipsed as the dominant force on Italy’s political right: first by the League, led by anti-migrant populist Matteo Salvini, then by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, with its roots in neo-fascism. Following elections in 2022, Meloni formed a governing coalition with their help.

The Berlusconi era “completely overturned the country’s political culture with new talk shows, and the total personification of politics”, Tages-Anzeiger wrote.

Oliver Meiler described him as a “masseur of the masses”.

But after years in power “there is no major reform that Italian men and women remember, not even a building that can be a symbol of his reign”, says Meiler. “It is said that he reacted well after the earthquake in L’Aquila of 2009 and quickly set up temporary homes for the homeless. Is that his entire legacy? What else? The public debt grew rapidly even under his seemingly liberal regime. The bureaucracy, however, remained the same, the country has not become more modern under CEO Berlusconi.”

Despite the criticism, the Corriere del Ticino newspaper said Berlusconi had an ability to seduce Italians from all sides. He was able to “embody all Italian contradictions, like himself, channelling them towards an optimism that attracted even those who were rationally against him,” it noted.

“He incited fraud, contempt for laws and rules, and the cunning of the populace, while laughing in front of the cameras,” said Tages-Anzeiger. “It is this laughter that will remain as his image. And Italians will continue to wonder whether it was a complicit laugh or if in the end he was not just laughing at them.”

Berlusconi and Swiss Mediaset legal case

Silvio Berlusconi was well acquainted with the Swiss justice system during his lifetime. In 2005, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland blocked CHF140 million relating to slush funds belonging to his Mediaset audiovisual empire.

The Italian media tycoon was accused of artificially inflating the price of film rights, purchased via shell companies owned by him, at the time of their resale to his group. The group was alleged to have built up slush funds abroad and reduced its profits in Italy in order to pay less tax. The loss of revenue to the Italian tax authorities was estimated at €7 million.

According to the prosecution, nearly $170 million was placed in the slush funds. Of this, around CHF140 million were blocked in Switzerland. In 2013, the case led to the first definitive sentence for the businessman: four years in prison, three of which were cancelled by an amnesty. Berlusconi served the sentence in the form of community service in a home for the elderly.

The money was finally released in 2016, following the acquittal by the Court of Cassation of Fedele Confalonieri and Piersilvio Berlusconi, respectively chairman and vice-chairman of Mediaset.

Swiss prosecutors also opened a money laundering probe against Berlusconi in 2005, also at Milan’s request. However, proceedings were dropped in September 2011.